Pine-stump fences and cedar rails are among the remnants of the local logging industry
My father-in-law, Frederick C. Baker, was born in 1906 in a log home on the shores of the Head River. His family were pioneers in the Sebright area in the mid 1800s. The family oral history tells that Fred’s maternal grandfather, Robert Young, was the first white settler in the Sebright area and that he lived there for several years before discovering the lake that bears his name, Young’s Lake.
Grandfather Young did not start out as a lumberman. His occupation was to ride what was locally referred to as The Pony Express. He travelled on horseback from the County Town of Whitby, bringing the mail to the Atherley area. As a sideline, he often carried small items for sale to the families along the way, like a country pedlar. It was his custom to break his journey with an overnight stay with a family near Uxbridge. Eventually, he married the daughter of the house, one Elizabeth Ann Smith, and brought her to live in Sebright.
Lumbering was the business of the day, so Young became a lumberman. He saw an opportunity to take advantage of the lumber being harvested and he built a sawmill in the village. After the trees had been cut, more settlers moved into the area to begin farming. Here was another opportunity, so Young established a cheese factory to use up the excess milk. While I could find no document to support it, the family’s oral history suggests it was Young who, in the late 1870s, donated the land on which the Sebright Church and its neighbouring cemetery are located. His gravestone is to be found in that cemetery.
Around the turn of the century, one of Grandfather Young’s daughters, Mary Alberta, married another member of the brotherhood of lumbermen, Charles Baker. Baker was a “timber cruiser,” a specialist in the field of lumbering. It was his task to go out by canoe and assess the potential of new areas for harvest. One of his favourite stories was of finding an area along the Head River where there was a single magnificent black cherry tree. The land was for sale, so he made the purchase, cut down the tree, took it to Orillia and sold it to Rolland Boat Works to be used for one of the beautiful wooden boats that were built there. The profit from the lumber in that one tree was enough to pay for the land on which it had grown.
Charles and Min, as she was called, lived in a log home near the Head River bridge. They raised a family of three boys and three girls. Their son Fred was the only one who followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to become a lumberjack. Fred had attended the one-room school in Sebright, where his duties included carrying wood for the furnace and carrying water from the nearby spring for drinking. With only one teacher for all grades, it was also the duty of the older students to coach the little ones with their reading and arithmetic.
Only a few years later, Fred went to work in the bush. Lumbering was a hard and dangerous life. Not only did these youngsters have to learn to use the risky tools of their trade, but they found that there were horses to be handled, falling trees to be avoided and, perhaps most perilous of all, riding the logs that were floated down the river, dodging hazards, breaking up log jams and always avoiding what they termed “widow makers” of one sort or another. At the end of the season, when the young men came out of the bush with high spirits and full pockets, there were rivalries with the town boys and hijinx that are perhaps better left to our imagination.
After a few years of life as a lumberjack, Fred decided to head for the city for a change. There he met the love of his life, Caroline Hudson. Carrie was born in London, England and had recently emigrated to Toronto with her family. They were married in 1927 and started a family of four boys.
Fred’s heart never left the country. He loved the outdoors, fishing, hunting and spending time in the familiar woods. Carrie was a city girl who for years complained that they never went anywhere on holiday except “Sebright, Sebright, Sebright!”
Their young sons shared their father’s views and enjoyed carefree, barefoot summers with their grandparents— in Sebright. One of those boys, my husband, now nearly 80 himself, can still remember those summers and the huge piles of sawdust left from his great grandfather’s sawmill. Nowadays we can still see remnants of the logging industry in the pine-stump fences and cedar rails in the area.
Near the end of the Second World War, the family moved back to Sebright and lived for a year in a log house without electricity or indoor plumbing. That was not Carrie’s best year.
The boys, however, thought it was great. They attended the same one-room school that their father had attended and one of their duties was still to carry water from the spring. That spring still flows today, but it now bears a sign saying that it is contaminated and unfit for drinking.
None of the boys continued in the lumbering tradition, but Fred never lost his love for the joys of nature. He was a gentleman of the old school, one who always removed his hat indoors and, if ever one of the boys use an expletive or any rough language, they’d hear a sharp rebuke: “Watch your language. There’s ladies present!”
Fred was a wise man, quiet and well-read. He was a great confidant and if he ever gave advice, it was carefully reasoned and spoken with kindness.
He often asked me when I was going to write my book. I know he wanted me to write of the family history but I was young and busy and impressed with academia’s insistence upon empirical evidence and documentary proof. How sad that I wasted the opportunity to record the tales and recollections that this wonderful man could have shared.
This article was originally published in the September/October 2010 issue of the Ramara Chronicle.